-PROJECT K- To Aru Majutsu no Kyuketsuki
by WitchHatsFTW
Summary: Academy City is the heart of the scientific world; the world furthest away from magic. So when an average Level 3 Esper comes across a vampire one night, how will he react to being thrown into a world of magic, darkness, and conspiracy? As he fights against these new threats, something awakens within him, and he starts realizing that perhaps he is not so average after all.
1. Brush Past

_**Disclaimer: This fanfiction is based off of To Aru Majutsu no Index and its various spin-off series. All characters, settings, and concepts present in the original works are property of Kazuma Kamachi and ASCII Media Works, and I claim no ownership.**_

_**This fanfiction aims to stick to the original work's established timeline and universe as closely as possible. However, as this fanfiction touches upon subjects not yet fully addressed in the original works, its descriptions and explanations might differ from the original work's future portrayal of such topics.**_

_**Rewritten under [PROJECT KYUKETSUKI]**_

* * *

**-Volume 1-**

**Prologue**

**An Average Level 3 Esper**

"My my, you're rather bold… Robbing me like this."

The silver-haired woman addressed the gruff-looking high school student- or perhaps delinquent dropout- in front of her quite calmly despite the current situation. She was chasing the thief down the streets of Academy City, almost amused at the situation.

The thief, on the other hand, could hardly find amusement in his current plight. When the woman placed the bag on the bench behind her, he had taken the opportunity to snatch it up and tuck it under his arm before bolting. She had been right; it was a bold move, but it put him on edge. The fact that she was so calm about what was going on only served to further unnerve him.

He was beginning to think he had robbed the wrong person.

In his flight, he hadn't exactly taken the time to pay attention to the scenery around him. Had he been more attentive, he would've noticed that, at some point during their chase, the residential dorms that lined the streets had given way to multi-story shopping complexes siting side-by-side with small cafés and cake shops. District 7, known for its high concentration of middle and high schools, had a few of these commercial areas scattered throughout. More often than not, they were strategically placed between residential areas and the schools their students attended.

This one happened to be rather busy; quite unsurprising considering most schools had let out by now. Students were walking down the sidewalks leisurely; many of them likely looking for a place to nab an after-school snack or hang out with friends. It wasn't exactly the best place for a thief to run, but he hoped he could get lost in the crowd.

So far, his plan seemed to be working. He ducked behind a crowd of students and weaved his way down the busy sidewalk. He could no longer hear the loud tapping of the woman's dress shoes as she chased him down the street.

Taking his chances, he glanced behind him and noticed that the woman had stopped in her tracks, and was instead looking around with a slight frown on her face.

He let out a sigh of relief. He was home free.

"That was a close one!" he sighed in relief, bending over and grabbing his knees to catch his breath. He still wanted to get as far away from her as possible, but he could use the crowds to that end. As long as he stayed low and didn't attract any attention, he was safe.

As he was thinking this, he turned around and accidentally brushed shoulders with a random high school student as he ran. Had the thief been paying attention, he would've noticed that the red-haired student stopped in his place and turned his head slightly. After giving the gruff-looking delinquent a quick glance, his eyes fell upon the bag he had tucked under his arm.

It was quite obviously a woman's bag, and the way he was clutching it told the high school student that it probably wasn't his.

The thief only managed to take three more steps before something rather unusual happened.

The bag, which had previously been rather light and easy-to-carry, slipped out of the thief's hands and hit the sidewalk with an unusually heavy thud. The gruff-looking robber, embarrassed that he had actually managed to drop his ill-gained loot, swiftly turned around in an attempt to snatch it up. He grabbed onto the straps and turned around to continue onward, but he felt his arm being pulled back.

He initially thought that someone must be pulling on the bag to get it away from him, but when he turned around, all he saw was the bag, still firmly planted on the ground, and the red-haired teenager glaring at him.

The student was of a relatively average height and had a rather lean build. His unkempt red hair was slightly ruffled and stuck up in a few places, but for the most part swept downwards in a relatively casual manner. A single strand to the right of his face hooked sharply, resting in front of his cheek instead of falling just short of his chin. His school uniform consisted of a white shirt with the top three buttons left unfastened, revealing a red t-shirt underneath, as well as light grey dress pants and black school shoes.

This was Academy City, filled with unique students called Espers, each with different abilities that were created by and grounded in science. With that being said, even for the thief, it wasn't hard to figure out what had happened. Meeting the gaze of the red-haired student who he had brushed past, the thief immediately made the connection.

"Y-you! What... what the hell did you do, you fucking Esper!?"

His voice was shaky and almost humorously high-pitched, somewhere between an indignant yell and a whine.

"Come on! This isn't fair! I just manage to get away, and then something like this happens!"

He was complaining.

This gruff-looking delinquent, who had just stolen a bag from a random woman, had the _nerve _to complain because his ill-planned robbery was being thwarted. The red-haired high school student wasn't usually one for heroics, but he wasn't about to let that kind of blatant ignorance go.

"Oi!" he took a slow step towards the thief. His hair was just long enough in the front to fall over his eyes, giving him a more ominous appearance.

The thief took a step back, but stayed close enough to the bag that it couldn't be grabbed out from underneath him, despite it being too heavy to do so in the first place.

"I can't really see a guy like you reading books, so I get that," the student began, smirking, "But come on, haven't you read manga? Or at least watched any TV? When the hell does robbing someone in broad daylight ever work out, dumbass!?"

He clenched his fist and brought it forward swiftly, hitting the robber in the face with a loud, audible impact. There was no way he had put his whole weight into that punch, but the force of the punch was still enough to send the thief stumbling backwards and skidding across the sidewalk.

"Haven't you figured it out yet? Petty thieves like you are really only there to make guys like me look cool, got it?"

Even if his question hadn't been rhetorical in nature, he would've received no response. The thief was already out cold.

"Geez, if you can't even handle an average Level 3 Esper like me, you probably shouldn't go around stealing things."

The student bent over and picked up the bag with ease. Whatever he used to make it heavier had been undone, and it could know be lifted up normally. He looked around for the owner of the bag.

However, when his eyes fell upon the silver-haired woman who was waving at him, he froze.

"K-Kamishirasawa-sensei!?" he asked, incredulously.

The silver-haired woman nodded as she walked up to him and smiled, "Hello, Arakuyo-kun. Thank you for saving my bag."

The student, whose full name was Arakuyo Kenji, handed the bag to her quickly and grinned nervously. He hadn't really thought of what meeting one of his teachers outside of school would be like, but Kamishirasawa-sensei was probably the one he wanted to meet the least.

UST, they called her. "Ultimate Sadistic Teacher".

"No problem, Kamishirasawa-sensei," Kenji smiled. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation, but at least outside of school, he was immune to her harsh teaching methods.

"Oh, but are you sure you can be walking around leisurely like this? Well, I'm sure it's fine as long as you've finished your homework."

Kenji's face drained of all color, but Kamishirasawa-sensei kept on smiling.

"Well, in that case, enjoy the rest of your day, Arakuyo-kun!"

As he watched the teacher stroll off into the crowds of people in the commercial zone, the panic set in.

The homework she had assigned sat untouched in his school bag, which he had tossed haphazardly onto the couch of his dorm upon his return home earlier that day. In truth, he had entirely and completely forgotten about it.

"Shit shit shit shit shit!" Kenji rushed off back towards his dorm.

It was currently July 18th; the fault lay in that date.

Because it was only two days until summer vacation began, and because Kenji's school had finished up the semester exams last week, many of the students had already gone into "vacation" mode, and were slacking off in class.

Kamishirasawa-sensei, rather than turning a blind eye to the slacking high school students, assigned an impossibly large amount of homework for her students to complete over the last few days of the semester. Kenji had kept putting off and eventually forgot about.

It was due tomorrow.

"I can't believe I forgot about it! Of all the stupid things…!"

Kenji, his one-track mind focused solely on the booklet of high-level physics equations and math problems waiting for him back in his dorm, barely took notice when he brushed up against a girl while he bolted down the sidewalk.

He was courteous enough to mutter a quick "sorry" as he rushed past, but aside from that, he wound up running past her without so much as a quick glance.

Had he been more observant, he would've noticed the pair of deep red eyes glancing over her shoulder at him, and the fangs poking out of her closed mouth. Her lips curled up into a wry smile, and there was a glint in her red eyes that could easily be described as mischievous. She continued to watch him until he turned the corner and vanished from her sights.

"My, my," she smiled, turning quickly on her heel and following the path he had just taken. She strolled after him with a casual pace, musing aloud, "You're quite bold... for a human."

* * *

**AN: A couple of things to mention. This is a complete rewrite of the old To Aru Majutsu no Kyuketsuki. It will go into much more detail, some timeline details have been rearranged, and certain events will be completely different. Because of this, even those of you who have read the original story will enjoy the new and improved version.**

**This story will be divided up into Volumes, hence the "Vol. 1 Prologue" at the beginning. This story will also be uploaded to my DeviantART, WitchHatStudios, with illustrations, but for now expect it to update here first. Once a full Volume is finished, a PDF download, complete with illustrations, will be available.  
**

**As I am trying to make this fanfiction, or as I've been calling it, fan-novel, as professional as possible, this story will not update as fast as my previous stories have, but I will try to stick to a consistent 1 chapter a week. **

**Thank you to anyone who reads this, and if you enjoyed the prologue, leave a review and spread the word, it really helps!**


	2. Do They Exist?

_****__**Disclaimer: This fanfiction is based off of To Aru Majutsu no Index and its various spin-off series. All characters, settings, and concepts present in the original works are property of Kazuma Kamachi and ASCII Media Works, and I claim no ownership.**_

* * *

**-Volume 1-**

**Chapter 1**

**A Rare Encounter with a Vampire.**

**Part 1**

Kenji had returned home a good four hours ago, and had been diligently working on his homework since then. Despite his worries of being incapable of finishing all of it, he had kicked his brain into overdrive and now he was nearly complete.

He sat on the floor of his dorm's main room, which was part-kitchenette and part living room, working on the booklet of homework he had placed on the short table in front of him. The front door was currently to his right, a large sliding glass door leading to the balcony on his left, and the TV sat in front of him against the wall. Along this same wall were the doors to his bedroom and bathroom.

Behind him was an all-white couch which matched the plain white walls quite well. Its modern design made it look stiff and blocky, but in actuality it was quite comfortable. Kenji had even fallen asleep on it once or twice, although he didn't make a habit of doing so.

There was a bar-like counter dividing the kitchenette from the living room area, though both were quite small, making the kitchenette near-useless for cooking extensively and the living room barely able to comfortably accommodate four or five house guests. Neither of these things particularly bothered Kenji, who only had to cook for one person and preferred to go out to meet with his friends.

At one point, Arakuyo Kenji had turned on the television, not to watch while he finished his homework, but as background noise to cut through the stiff silence permeating throughout his dorm room. The dull, monotone words of the news anchor went unnoticed by Kenji, who was focused solely on finishing.

His eyes widened when he turned to the last page. There was only one more question. There was one final word problem that stood between him and the freedom that finishing his homework would entail.

It was a complex physics problem, but skimming through what was written, Kenji had caught sight of the phrase "calculate the density". That was all he needed. Those words alone were his salvation. This last problem would be a piece of cake.

Like a marathon runner catching sight of the finish line, Kenji rushed at the problem with a new sense of determination. Within minutes he had blown through all the calculations, and was proudly writing the answer down.

He finally laid down his pencil. He was done.

He had conquered the insurmountable task.

Letting out a heavy sigh of relief, Kenji glanced over at the clock.

20:23

"Ah, I'll probably have enough time to head down to the convenience store, then."

Kenji pulled himself to his feet. As he stretched to loosen his stiffened muscles, he could hear his joints cracking from hours of stillness. His right hand ached dully from all the writing, but he felt an overall sense of freedom and accomplishment. With these lighthearted feelings in the forefront of his mind, he stepped out of his dorm.

Kenji set off towards the convenience store at a leisurely pace. It might result in getting caught past curfew on his way back, but as long as he was headed towards a residential area carrying a shopping bag, the worst he'd receive is a warning from an Anti-Skill patrol.

As he walked, Kenji cast semi-bored glances down the alleyways between buildings. It wasn't that he was really expecting to spot anything, but it broke the monotony of staring down the empty streets and grey sidewalks of the residential zone.

Because Kenji was not expecting to see anything interesting, when his eyes fell upon something, he froze in place.

It was extremely hard to make out in the dark, but it was very distinctly shaped, and it seemed to be splayed out on the ground.

His eyes widened upon realizing exactly what it was.

It was the collapsed body of a girl, lying on the ground down the alleyway.

She looked to be around his age, with long green hair resting on her back and fanning out where she fell. She was wearing a light pink blouse and a faded blue denim skirt, both of which stood in contrast to the unusual color of her hair.

His first instinct was to run over to make sure she was still alive.

"O-oi!" He called, bending over. Upon closer inspection, there was a pool of blood underneath her body. He wanted to check the extent of her injuries, but he didn't dare roll her over. This could easily become a crime scene, and the last thing Kenji needed was to become a suspect because he was trying to help.

"Oi, are you okay?"

He heard a small moan, not unlike the sound one made right after waking up from a relaxing nap. It was gentle and peaceful, not something he had expected from someone in her condition.

"Are… are you hurt? Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

Before waiting for a response, he pulled out his cell phone. He had only wanted to confirm she was still alive before calling one. If she had been dead, he would've called the cops instead.

However, just as he was about to flip the phone open, she grabbed onto his wrist.

"B-blood…"

"W-what?"

He had heard her words clearly; he wasn't asking her to repeat herself. Instead, he had spoken in confusion. What exactly had she meant by "blood"? Obviously she was bleeding, but something told Kenji she wasn't just stating the obvious.

He looked down at her, and she brought her head up to look at him.

Immediately, two things stood out about her appearance.

One was her eyes. They were a blood red; much more deep and vibrant than an albino's would be. It was quite frankly inhuman.

Yet, even if the eyes weren't enough to tip Kenji off (after all, colored contacts were not uncommon in Academy City), the fangs poking out in front of her lower lip were.

This girl wasn't normal.

_"__What is she? A result of some kind of experiment…!?"_

"Blood…" she repeated, pulling herself up.

Sitting up with her legs folded to either side of her, Kenji could now clearly see the injury. It was a jagged hole in her chest, between her breasts. Her shirt was ripped there, but it still clung to her skin because of red liquid soaking into it. The wound was such a shape that it looked not like it was made by a bladed weapon or a gun, but by some sort of roughly sharpened object.

_"__W-wait, don't tell me…!"_

If Arakuyo Kenji was a touch more ignorant, if he hadn't spent so much of his free time watching anime and reading manga, then he would've readily dismissed the thought that had surfaced in his mind. Rather, had he been more grounded in reality, he wouldn't have even thought of the idea in the first place.

But as it was now, there was a glaringly obvious connection to be made here, between the location of the wound, the girl's strange appearance, and the meaning of the phrase she had been repeating.

"O…oi, what are you supposed to be, some kind of vampire?" Kenji asked.

He meant it to sound sarcastic, but his voice shook and his throat was uncomfortably dry.

"Yeah. Good eye."

Her voice was no different from any other high school girl's voice, and yet the very words she spoke, and the calm seriousness of the delivery, sent shivers up Kenji's spine.

It wasn't sarcasm; she was serious.

"O-oi! You just expect me to believe that all of a sudden!?"

Kenji had known she wasn't normal, and his brain had even supplied him with the assumption that she was, in fact, a vampire. Even still, he had a skeptical side. A vampire? He wasn't sure whether to laugh at that or not.

This was Academy City, the heart of the scientific world. It was a place where science took precedence over all. In this world of science, what room was there for mystical things like vampires?

"Fine then, I'll just have to prove it."

At her words, the green-haired girl leaned forwards and began crawling on all fours towards the red-haired Esper. Her lips parted, once again revealing her two sharp fangs.

Kenji was an Esper, but the panic and disbelief that he was experiencing had a firm hold on his mind. He couldn't concentrate.

As the green-haired girl crept ever closer to Kenji, he fell backwards and felt his back press against the cold wall of the alleyway. He was cornered.

"This won't hurt. Much."

It hadn't been encouraging at all, not that it particularly sounded like it was meant to. She had simply stated it, just like she had calmly stated she was a vampire.

Her lips were so close to his neck that he could feel her hot breaths.

Then came the pinpricks. Two light stings digging into the flesh of Kenji's neck, reaching a vital vein and draining him of his lifeblood.

Any doubts completely vanished from Kenji's mind. He had previously been somewhat skeptical of the legitimacy of her statements. For all he knew, she could just be some kind of sick pervert who got off on pretending to be a vampire and simply dressed the part well.

But he could feel her fangs digging into her neck. If they weren't real, she was doing a very good job of not murdering him. Even though they had pierced his jugular vein, not a drop of blood had spilled out down his neck. On the contrary, he could almost feel her sucking the blood out of him.

_"__Well, at least now I know what feels like to be a juice box," _Kenji mused to himself despite the situation.

Time felt like it was dragging on for Kenji, but he figured that it couldn't have been more than a couple minutes. When she finally stopped drinking his blood and pulled back, he barely felt lightheaded. He reached up and felt his neck, but the holes were already closed, just a couple of tiny bumps where they had been.

Almost miraculously, the large gash in the green-haired girl's chest sealed itself up, and while one would initially think watching such a thing would be rather incredible, Kenji realized that outside of manga and anime, such a scene was rather quite grotesque.

Resisting the urge to puke, he broke the silence between them.

"So, am I going to turn into a vampire now?"

Her lips curved upwards into a wry smile as she let a small laugh slip past them.

"No way," she replied casually.

He sighed mentally, though perhaps prematurely.

"I'd have to drink way more than that to turn you into one!"

His eyes narrowed. He still wasn't sure if he could believe what she had said, but she didn't have a real reason to lie to him either.

"Relax, relax! I'm not going to just haphazardly turn the person who saved my life into a vampire!" she smiled.

Kenji brought himself to his feet shakily and watched the vampire do the same. In spite of her previous injuries, her movements were smooth— almost elegant— and he couldn't help but watch her curiously.

"You just gonna stand there and stare?" she asked, tilting her head to the side cutely.

While there was a lot he wanted to ask her, he was still having trouble gathering his thoughts together. In the end, he just settled for…

"Sorry, it's… what exactly happened to you?"

"Oh, this?" she looked down to her bloodstained shirt, "I got into a fight, actually."

"Like, just a normal old street fight?" Kenji asked, almost incredulously. He hadn't really thought too extensively on what a real-life vampire would be like, but this was not exactly living up to his expectations.

"Sorta, except with two mages," she stated matter-of-factly.

Even though he was surrounded by Espers, and was in fact an Esper himself, he wasn't particularly astonished by their seemingly "magical" abilities. They were, after all, ultimately grounded in scientific principles. So when it came to the idea that magic was real, he only had one response.

"What?" he asked flatly. The way he said it made it sound like wasn't a question.

"Oh, yeah, you're on the Science Side, aren't you?" she asked. Without waiting for a response, she continued, "Allow me to explain bluntly. Magic exists."

"Oi," Kenji replied, an unamused look on his face, "That wasn't an explanation at all! Magic exists? Vampires exist? What kind of crazy world did I step into... huh?"

Kenji trailed off as the vampire leaned towards him. For a split second, he was worried she was going to bite him again.

Instead, she whispered into his ear, "It was nice meeting you. See ya later, Arakuyo Kenji."

Without another word, the green-haired vampire leapt into the air and landed on the roof of one of the buildings making up the alleyway, an impressive feat considering it was at least six stories tall.

"H-hey! Wait!" Kenji called after her, to no avail.

He wasn't entirely sure how she knew his name, but she alone was an enigma, so in reality he wasn't all-too-surprised by it. Perhaps it was a side effect of her drinking his blood. Perhaps she possessed the eyes of a being that could see the names and life-spans of any human she looked at. Regardless, he wasn't really in the mood to speculate.

After a quick check to make sure his clothes hadn't gotten any blood on them (he wanted to avoid any potential misunderstandings), Kenji continued on his way towards the convenience store. That had, after all, been his initial destination.

Still, he couldn't exactly proceed with his normal life after a meeting like that. Even as he shopped, his mind was still focused on the events that had just transpired. Vampires exist, and, at least according to the green-haired one he met tonight, so did magic.

He went around the store and picked up a couple of items he needed.

"I wonder what she meant by 'Science Side'?" he asked himself aloud. There was no one else in the store besides the clerk anyway, so it wasn't like he was particularly worried about being overheard.

He grabbed a few cans of assorted soda and placed them in his basket before moving along.

"Also, she said 'see ya'…" Kenji continued to brood over the words of the vampire, "I mean, some people are just casual like that, but it kind of implies she plans on meeting me again."

He scratched the back of his head as he threw some wrapped yakisoba sandwiches into his basket. Checking to see that he had everything he needed, he nodded to himself and made his way up to the counter.

As the cashier was ringing up his items, he reached into his pocket to grab his personal ID, which also doubled as an ATM card. Upon finding nothing in his pocket, he realized exactly how the vampire girl from earlier learned his name.

When the cashier asked how he was going to pay for his items, his face paled. Clenching his fists in anger, he yelled out,

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! SHE STOLE MY FREAKING CASH CARD!"

**Part 2**

With a defeated sigh, Kenji stumbled back into his dorm empty-handed. He felt exhausted from a combination of everything that had happened, and he was trying to ignore the fact that he had essentially just wasted his time.

_"__Well, I did get to meet a vampire, so that's something…" _

To be fair, he still wasn't sure if that was a bright side. She had, after all, basically robbed him. Still, it wasn't like she could use his ID to buy anything; if she tried to use it anywhere they would immediately notice that it wasn't hers.

Once again, he wasn't sure if that was a bright side. It meant that her stealing his cash card was of no benefit to either of them.

In his thoughts, he barely noticed the light seeping out from beneath the door of his bathroom until his hand was almost on the handle. He stopped abruptly. This was Kenji's personal dorm and no one should be here aside from him, but Kenji never left the bathroom light on like this.

_"__I would bet all my stolen money that a certain vampire's behind this door. That's typically how these things play out."_

Kenji lowered his hand.

_"__I bet the door's unlocked too. Had I been a touch more unobservant, this situation could've taken a very bad turn…"_

Kenji frowned and turned around, completely circumventing the possibility of walking in on a certain naked vampire girl and having something thrown at him. However, just as he was about to walk away, he heard the bathroom door open up behind him.

"Oh, when did you get back?"

The casual voice unmistakably belonged to the vampire girl he met earlier.

Kenji turned around, expecting to see a dressed— or otherwise covered— green-haired vampire looking back at him. However, once his eyes fell upon her standing behind him, his face grew red and he immediately turned back around.

She was completely nude.

"Hey, are you listening to me!?" she asked, almost indignantly. Apparently she didn't care about her state of undress.

"What are you doing here!?" Kenji asked, still averting his gaze, "and why are you _naked_!?"

"I don't have a place to stay, and my clothes are ruined," she replied casually, answering both of his questions. Kenji wasn't looking at her for obvious reasons, but she still shrugged dismissively as she spoke, "Besides, you saved my life. I am humbly indebted to you."

Kenji narrowed his eyes, though she couldn't see this action since he was facing away from her.

"To hell with that, there's no way I raised one of those 'I owe you my life' flags! Besides, you stole my cash card almost immediately afterwards! If you really felt indebted to me, then why would you do such a thing!?"

"Oh yeah… You can have that back, by the way. I only used it to get into your dorm. These things double as an extra key for the electronic locks."

She tossed the thin piece of plastic at him, an ineffectual action for two reasons. One, Kenji still had his back to her, so he hadn't seen the card flying towards him. Two, it wound up hitting the back of his head lightly, which she feared only served to irritate him.

"And yeah, you're right, I'm not here 'cause I'm indebted to you or anything. I'm here to freeload, obviously!"

She had sucked his blood, stolen his ID/cash card, and now she had the _nerve_ to try to freeload off of him!? Kenji took a few deep breaths to calm down before giving his answer.

"Get Out."

"Aw, but I was so honest!"

"You just said you were going to freeload off of me! Why would that convince me let you stay?!"

Kenji wasn't one of those hopeless perverts who'd just go along with anything a girl asked them because they were attractive. Furthermore, she had already caused him enough problems already. Not to mention that having a _normal_ girl living at his dorm would cause a lot more problems for him, let alone a _vampire. _He really wasn't eager to get roped into whatever crazy world she was a part of.

"I… I really don't have anywhere else to go…" she spoke, almost inaudibly. Her voice was low and filled with sadness, and, though he couldn't see her, he could practically _feel _the sad eyes gazing up at him pleadingly.

He _knew _she was trying to guilt-trip him. He knew he should just hold firmly in his decision. He should just go into his bedroom, give her a baggy t-shirt she could cover herself with, and kick her out without another word.

Letting her stay with him was pretty much an invitation for all sorts of crazy stuff to happen. He could say goodbye to his life as an average high school student.

He knew all of this, but in the end, Kenji was just _too _kind for his own good. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to turn her away like that.

"One night…" he spoke sternly.

She hadn't missed the compromise he had proposed, but she wanted to make absolutely sure she had heard him right.

"What was that?"

"You can stay here one night, alright!?" he replied in an irritated tone. Understandably, he wasn't happy about the situation, but he couldn't exactly take back what he had said now that he said it.

"Thanks a bunch, Kenji-kun!"

Kenji wasn't sure what shocked him more; the fact that this vampire girl who he didn't even know by name had just addressed him on a first name basis, or the fact that she had wrapped her arms around him from behind in a tight hug. She was rather well endowed, so her bare breasts were pressing up against Kenji's back.

"I'm Miyako Mizuki! Please take good care of me from now on!"

Kenji, who had numerous reasons to be annoyed at the current situation, struggled to get the green-haired vampire off his back as he shouted, "Oi! Get off me! And put some damn clothes on you shameless woman!"

**Part 3**

Light filtered in through the long, vertical blinds covering the sliding glass door to the dorm's balcony and roused Kenji from his slumber. The teen was currently resting upon the blocky-looking modern couch in his dorm's living room, having given Mizuki his bed for the night.

Pulling himself up, he glanced over at the alarm clock he had fetched from his bedroom before sleeping briefly to check the time.

It was still a bit early, but he switched off the alarm before it even went off and climbed off the couch anyway. He wanted to take some to think about his current situation.

"Vampires, huh?" he sighed, heading into the kitchen. It definitely wasn't everyday someone met a vampire. He briefly wondered if everything that had transpired was just a dream, stemming from his rush to finish his homework. Perhaps he had finished it, then climbed into his couch, hence why he woke up there.

But that wouldn't explain the alarm clock sitting on the floor, and when he cracked the door to his bedroom open, he could still see the sleeping figure of Mizuki sprawled out on his bed. The sheets over her were lopsided and didn't cover her entire body, which to Kenji's dismay was still unclothed.

"Shameless woman," he muttered quietly as he closed the door softly. He walked over to the kitchenette and put some bread into the toaster before heading into the bathroom.

He preferred to take his showers in the evening, but with all the excitement of the night before, he hadn't gotten a chance. Sighing heavily, Kenji let the warm water wash over him as he thought about everything.

There were a lot of questions left unanswered, but Kenji wasn't sure if he wanted to even ask them. If she was out of his hair by the end of the day, he might be able to patch his normal life back together.

"Though, I doubt I could just brush this all off as a bad dream…"

Instead of worrying about things that Kenji didn't know, he could at least speculate on the things he did. It was obvious that someone— according to Mizuki a magician— that wanted Mizuki dead. Would he really be able to kick her out knowing someone was hunting her?

Kenji sighed again. He had a feeling he'd be doing that a lot today.

As he turned off the water and began drying himself off, he heard a frantic knock on the bathroom door.

"Kenji-kun! Hurry up in there, I gotta goooo!"

Had Kenji been a touch less serious about this whole scenario, he might've snickered at that notion. Despite some manga portraying vampires in a cute manner, he held firmly to the traditional image established by western folklore. An inhuman creature that would burn in the light of the sun, sleep in coffins, and suck dry the blood of its victims.

Now that he had actually met one, that image was slowly falling apart, and replaced with…

"Kenji-kuuun, I'm gonna leak!"

He resisted the urge to sigh again, wrapped the towel around his waist, and opened the door. He half-expected to see Mizuki standing there naked, but fortunately, she had thrown on the white t-shirt he had offered her last night. It looked a little big on her,

She brushed past him quickly in her desperation and closed the bathroom door with a loud slam.

Kenji took the opportunity to retrieve and change into his uniform before Mizuki got out of the bathroom. After getting dressed, he headed over to the kitchen and buttered the toast he had made earlier before sitting down on the couch and watching the morning news.

Mizuki had come out of the bathroom sometime after, but instead of joining him with eating breakfast, she stumbled back into his bedroom tiredly. He was about to say something along the lines of "Oi, don't sleep all day!", but as he turned around, he noticed the time on his alarm clock. It was about time he left for school.

Kenji sighed once again and pulled himself off the couch, grabbing his school bag lying on the floor at his feet. He double-checked that his homework was in fact in his bag before heading for the door. Once there, he slipped his shoes on and— although he figured Mizuki was already sound asleep once more— gave a quick, "I'm heading out" before leaving.

The walk to school wasn't exactly long. By nature, they usually weren't. Dorms were school-run, so it was common for dorms to be within a reasonable walking distance to the schools their students attended.

Despite it being a short walk, Kenji was hoping to take as much of the time it would take to clear his mind. He wanted to leave his new problem behind, both figuratively and literally, and stop worrying about things for a bit. It was the last day of the semester; he wasn't about to let the incipient sense of freedom be soiled due to his current situation.

He realized that, seeing as the convenience store was in the commercial zone between his dorm and his school, his walk to school would take him past the same alleyway he met Mizuki. Seeing as he wanted to avoid thinking about last night as much as possible, he pointedly avoided paying the alleyway too much attention. Without so much as a glance, he walked past it and continued on his way.

Had he looked down the alleyway, he would've noticed two cloaked figures— one standing and one squatting close to the ground— standing over the bloodstain left there by a certain green-haired vampire.

**Part 4**

School dragged on a lot longer than Kenji would've hoped, but finally he found himself standing just outside its gates. While the school sat right behind him, in his mind, he was far away from that place of education. Over a month of vacation stood between him and that school, and he planned to enjoy that month to the fullest.

He began by setting off towards his dorm.

Most high school students would kick off their vacation by hanging out with friends, and indeed Kenji had planned the same. However, during lunch, the friends he was going to hang out with canceled due to extraneous circumstances, and now he found himself alone.

Not that particularly bothered Kenji. He wasn't a loner by any means, and he definitely enjoyed the company of friends, but he was the kind of person who, for the most part, liked to take things in stride. If he wound up alone, he'd appreciate the solitude.

That being said, he didn't take _everything _in stride. If something irritated him, he could quickly lose his temper. A particular vampire who had inconvenienced him by stealing his ID and squatting at his house for a night came to mind.

_"__At least she'll be out of my hair soon."_

As he passed by the convenience store on his walk home, he realized he _still _never actually picked up the things he needed. Now that he had his ID with him, he could go in quickly and grab everything he was going to buy last night.

He headed into the store and grabbed a basket. Since he knew the convenience store like the back of his hand, and since he was essentially just repeating what he did last night, he picked up everything quickly and headed up to the counter.

However, when he laid eyes on the cashier, waiting patiently for him to place his basket on the counter so she may begin bagging his items, he froze.

"M-M-Miyako-san!?" he spoke, surprised. Indeed the person standing before him was Miyako Mizuki. She had her green hair tied back into a ponytail and was wearing the white-and-blue uniform of this convenience store's staff.

"Hey, Kenji-kun! I got a job!"

She leaned over the counter in a manner Kenji could only describe as teasingly, gazing at him with proud eyes. Instead of gracing her with a response, or letting her get the better of him, he sighed and placed his basket on the counter.

"So," she began, picking up one of the wrapped yakisoba breads he had in his basket and scanning it, "Now that I have a job and everything, will you let me stay longer? I technically wouldn't be freeloading anymore."

"A-ah, well…" he began, looking around carefully. The question had caught him off guard, and since this was the middle of the day, there were more people here now than there had been last night. He was wary of anyone eavesdropping on their conversation, lest they get the wrong idea about the two of them.

However, before he could continue, the automatic door opened and the electronic chime sounded behind him. However, instead of a person walking in, a strange ball of orange light floated into the center of the room and stopped.

Kenji's eyes narrowed.

"Get down!"

As he yelled, he jumped over the counter and grabbed Mizuki, bringing them both down as the ball of light exploded. They were both unharmed, but he could tell from the pained cries of customers that not everyone had avoided the blast.

"Okay, what the hell!?

Kenji poked his head up over the counter. Whatever that was, it _wasn't _an Esper ability. If it had been comprised of conventional energy or light, Kenji would've been able to tell. Instead, it had seemed almost mystical in nature.

"I told you magic exists!" Mizuki replied in a cocky voice.

"Oi… is this really the time for that!?"

Kenji heard footsteps approaching the convenience store and ducked down behind the counter again. Charging at the enemy was a good way to get your ass kicked quickly. He wasn't happy about someone who'd flippantly attack a convenience store, but he was a foreigner to the world of magic. He wasn't even sure if conventional attacks would work on a strong mage.

"Come out, little vampire, I know you're hiding here!"

The voice— distinctly female and mature-sounding, likely a grown woman— grew closer along with the footsteps. It undoubtedly belonged to the attacker, and most likely the person hunting Mizuki.

"Oh, what's wrong, did that explosion hurt you too?" her voice started off gently, but at once it shifted to a dark, angry tone, "Cut the shit, bitch, I know you're not as squishy as us humans!"

Kenji frowned. He didn't like cowering behind counters like he was defenseless, but at the same time, he had no grasp on the extent of her powers. For all he knew, his Esper abilities might be useless on her.

Still, he wanted to at least catch a glimpse of his opponent.

Peeking up over the edge of the counter, Kenji laid eyes on a tall woman with golden hair and golden eyes. She was clad in a black women's waistcoat over a white, short-sleeved turtleneck blouse, as well as a pleated black skirt, black thigh-high stockings, and brown boots with pointed toes.

Her most notable feature, however, was the large black witch hat that sat perched atop her head. A long, white bow was wrapped around the base of the hat, and the tip was zig-zagged in an almost lightning-bolt pattern.

The look on her face was completely sadistic, and just seeing it sent shivers up Kenji's spine. He could definitely see this woman having killed vampires before.

"I can't kill you, Damnit! If I don't bring you back alive, _that person _will be rather upset with me. I fuckin' hate clerics, but I've got my hands tied figuratively here!" she yelled, looking around the store.

She must not have figured that Mizuki was _working_ at the convenience store, because she hadn't bothered looking behind the counter yet.

"Kenji-kun, if I were to reveal myself to her, she'll only focus on me! Use that chance to escape!"

Mizuki had whispered into his ear as she crouched down, preparing to leap from her hiding spot.

Kenji shook his head, "It's fine, I'll fight her!"

"You can't!" Mizuki frowned, "She's-"

"FOUND YOU!" the woman shouted instantly, turning her attention to the counter. Mizuki's eyes widened and she pulled Kenji out of the way moments before a large beam-like attack completely vaporized the counter.

"Well well," she smiled, looking at the two who had emerged now that their hiding spot was destroyed, "looks like our little vampire got herself a boyfriend… or is he just a snack you're keeping around, hm?"

"You… say what you want about me, but I won't let you involve an innocent human!"

Mizuki yelled this as she recklessly charged at the magician attacking them. The magician smirked and aimed a book she held in her hand at the vampire girl.

"A… a grimoire!?" Mizuki gasped, alarmed.

"Oh, that's right, you've never seen me fight seriously before, since _that person _always told me to hold back. Well, he's not here right now. I can do whatever I want!"

The giant laser attack fired once more without so much as a spell or a gesture. Kenji wouldn't have noticed this, but it was enough to make Mizuki freeze in place. She turned and closed her eyes, waiting for something terrible to happen.

It never came.

She heard a pained cry from the woman magician, and saw Kenji driving his elbow into her side.

"G-gaaah!" she coughed harshly as all the air in her lungs was forced out. The force behind his strike was impossible for a normal human, leaving only one possibility.

"An… an Esper!?"

Kenji smiled, "Your technique is focused on overpowering your opponent. A quick, powerful attack fired off in one direction… however, you can't target multiple people at once… that's why Miyako-san told me to run while she focused on her."

"How did you-!?"

"That book makes it even more obvious. You can only shoot your lasers where that book is facing! As long as I hit you and made you turn the book off course, Miyako-san would be fine!"

"Heh, even if you know all that, my magic can activate instantaneously! Can you dodge something like that!?" she smiled, "Screw tactics! Screw rules! Fightin's all about power, ya know!"

She whirled around and took a quick step back, aiming her grimoire at Kenji.

"Unfortunately, while I've figured out your technique…" Kenji pointed out, sighing, "You have no idea what mine is, do you? I'll give you a hint; it's not super strength or anything cliché like that."

She fired a volley of star-shaped magic blasts at Kenji, but like a gatling gun, they were focused only at Kenji. She smirked. If he tried to dodge left or right, she could just turn the book and-

Kenji smiled at the look of utter shock on her face as he jumped up and began to float above the attack. Since she was expecting him to dodge right or left, when he took the option she had thought was impossible and dodged upwards, she froze in place.

He lowered himself to the ground to the side of the attack and charged at her once more, giving her a heavy kick that sent her flying into one of the shelves nearby. Angrily, she pulled herself to her feet, but he was too quick. Before she could even grab her grimoire again, he had rushed up to her and punched her into the refrigerator for cold drinks. Her body broke the glass and she collapsed to the floor.

She looked up angrily at the red-haired high school student who defeated her.

"Don't come to Academy City and start causing trouble for yourself if you can't even win against an average Level 3, dumbass!"

That was the last thing she heard from him before she passed out completely.

Nodding successfully, Kenji's expression turned from triumphant to serious before he turned to Mizuki.

"Here's the deal… I'll let you stay at my place from now on… but I want some answers about the world I've been dragged into."

**Part 5**

Kenji sighed and leaned back in the booth he was seated in, staring across the table at Mizuki. The two were eating out at a family restaurant, since in the end Kenji was still unable to pick up anything from the convenience store.

"So, what's going on here?"

The question had been purposely vague so Mizuki could start explaining wherever she wanted.

"Ah… well, first off, I think it would be a good idea to explain the magical world. Nowadays, most magic users are associated with a religious group, and even utilize magic using religious symbols as a catalyst."

"That's funny, when you think of 'church' and 'witchcraft', reactions such as burning and stoning come to mind…" Kenji pointed out, taking a bite of his food.

"Ah, well, I guess they still reject magic, but acknowledge it as something necessary to maintain their power…" Mizuki explained, "Furthermore, they still hunt down rogue mages not associated with the church, so those that concept isn't entirely wrong."

"So, what do vampires have to do with any of this?" Kenji pondered.

"Ah, see… vampires officially don't exist yet… or rather, more accurately, they haven't been discovered by the Magic Side as a whole. Now, that isn't to say the Magic Side has never encountered vampires… but just like how the scientific community can make discoveries that aren't accepted as truth right away, the Magic Side has yet to officially accept vampires as being real."

Kenji nodded, satisfied with Mizuki's explanation.

"Even though I'm a vampire myself, there are some things even I don't know. However, I can tell you that vampires are practically immortal. Even if you hadn't shown up when you did, I likely would've been fine. They might've come back and captured me, though, so thank you anyway!"

Kenji frowned, "Hey, didn't you say I saved your life just yesterday?"

"Semantics," Mizuki brushed off, taking a bite of her food and smiling, "Anyway, that woman you fought today is named Marisa Greenhart… she's working with some other magician from the Irish Catholic Church. Apparently they have an artifact that can seal away vampires while keeping them alive. My guess is they're trying to capture a vampire to prove their existence to the Magic Side as a whole, which is why they need me alive."

"But, last night they just left you lying on the ground," Kenji pointed out, "If they wanted to capture you, wouldn't they have done so right then?"

"From what I could understand, the artifact wasn't fully prepared, and they had no other way of transporting me. If they're staying at a hotel or something, it's not like they could just carry a bloodied body into the elevator. I guess they just figured I'd stay put until they returned."

"And when they didn't, they tracked you down again and attacked the convenience store…" Kenji finished.

"Right…" Mizuki trailed off in thought for a brief moment, "A-about that… Marisa Greenhart is normally much stronger than that. That's why I told you not to fight her. She said she wasn't holding back, but for some reason she was even weaker than she normally is."

"Well, regardless, I won," Kenji smirked, "Besides, even if she comes back, she still doesn't know how my ability works."

"Oh yeah!" Mizuki's eyes widened, recalling Kenji's fighting from earlier, "What was that!?"

"It's called Density Shift," Kenji answered, "It allows me to manipulate the density of an object with or without changing its size. Keeping things in layman's terms, this means I can either make things heavier and lighter, or grow and shrink them while maintaining their original weight. I can do this to my own body too, that's how I was able to float earlier, and why all my punches seemed more forceful."

"Ah, that's cool!" Mizuki smiled, "Unfortunately, I'm the magic equivalent of a Level 0… I don't have any magical ability whatsoever…"

"Well, you'll be staying at my dorm from now on, so I'll protect you if they show up again!" Kenji declared proudly, pointing to himself with his thumb.

"Pfft…" Mizuki smiled, "That was really cheesy, Kenji-kun."

Kenji blushed slightly, "S-shut up! You should be grateful I'm even letting you stay with me!"

Mizuki smiled leaning over the table. She was still wearing her work uniform, but earlier she had undone the top few buttons. As she leaned over the table, Kenji could see down her shirt, "I am, Kenji-kun."

While Kenji was pointedly avoiding looking at her chest, Mizuki grinned mischievously, throwing her arms around him and planting a kiss on his cheek.

"Wh-what the hell are you doing! Stop leaning across the table!" Kenji yelled.

Mizuki looked up at him and pressed a finger to his lips, "Shh, you're making a scene!"

"Get off me you SHAMELESS WOMAN!"

* * *

**AN: Alright, Chapter 1 and we get some action already!  
**

**This one took me a bit longer to do, and I hit some major roadblocks here and there. Writer's Block was also a bit of an issue, and I'm still coming out of that a bit.**

**I may go back and make some minor changes at a later date, but for now, look forwards to chapter 2!**

**Also, the Witch Hat worn by Marisa Greenhart is indeed a shameless author insert. It's the strongest character in the story, possessing unlimited magical prowess and energy. It's also a Level 9000 Esper who can use magic without being injured because it's that awesome, and it's infused with the DNA of every single main character in To Aru Majutsu no Index. It's overly extensive and tragic backstory made it who it is today, and it could easily make friends with all of the characters ever if it wanted to.**

**Unfortunately, it's also inanimate object incapable of talking, thinking, using magic or performing any kinds of calculations, and no one in the entire story knows it's true worth. To literally everyone in the universe in which it dwells, it will forever only be seen as a normal witch hat. Bummer.**


	3. Breath on a Mirror

_**Disclaimer: This fanfiction is based off of To Aru Majutsu no Index and its various spin-off series. All characters, settings, and concepts present in the original works are property of Kazuma Kamachi and ASCII Media Works, and I claim no ownership.**_

* * *

**-Volume 1-**

**Chapter 2**

**Gone in a Moment.**

**Part 1**

"Lucky~! Even though 80 percent of the appliances in District 7 were fried by a freak electrical storm, our fridge and our air conditioner made it through unscathed!"

"Oi, whose appliances are you calling 'ours'!?"

Kenji was seated upon the blocky white couch—upon which he had slept two nights in a row thanks to Mizuki's presence— with an irritated look on his face. While he _was _partially irritated at the vampire's words (she had settled into this new life a bit too quickly in his mind), he was more so irritated at her current state of dress.

Which was to say, of course, that she was once again completely nude.

"Put some damn clothes on already! Shameless woman!"

She smiled. She knew he wasn't _looking _at her, but she was definitely _affecting _him by being naked. She got some sense of satisfaction knowing she could tease him easily, though his response was mostly the same.

"All I have is my work uniform and the t-shirts you lent me," Mizuki pointed out, opening up the fridge to find herself some breakfast. The cold air that poured out of the appliance was testament to just how lucky they were.

_"__In other words, you have clothes…" _thought Kenji dryly as he continued to avert his gaze. He was absentmindedly staring at the TV screen without actually paying attention to what was on it. Currently, they were re-running the news report that aired earlier that morning, notifying the residents of District 7 why their appliances were out of commission.

"Go out shopping then. I'm sleeping in to celebrate the first day of vacation." Kenji replied, turning the TV off with the remote and turning around so his head was facing the stark white wall of the back couch cushions.

"I don't have any money!" Mizuki protested, "I _do _have a job… but… well… You saw how my first day went."

Kenji sighed. If he told her that wasn't his problem, she'd continue sauntering around his dorm in her birthday suit. If he told her he'd buy her clothes, she'd likely drag him around for hours and effectively ruin his first day of summer break.

As he was weighing his options, his thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sound of his cell phone ringing. It was sitting within arm's reach on the table nearby, so without so much as turning around, he reached behind him and blindly felt around for it until he snatched it up. He held it up and took one glance at the caller ID.

"K-Kamishirasawa-sensei!" He yelled, practically falling over off the edge of the couch. He pulled himself upright and stared at the phone in confusion.

_"__What could she want with me!?" _

"Kamishirasawa-sensei?" Mizuki echoed in confusion. Kenji turned to shush her quickly before turning back around and answering the phone.

"Hello?"

"Kenji-kun! I hope I'm not disturbing you!" The voice on the other end of the phone was indeed the "UST" herself. Before waiting for Kenji to respond, she continued on immediately.

"Regarding why I'm calling…. If it isn't too much trouble, I would like you to show up at today's supplementary classes."

"Huh?" Kenji asked, equal parts shocked and annoyed, "but I got straight A's this semester! Why would I need to go to supplementary lessons?"

"Oh, don't worry, it's nothing academic. There are some things I need to discuss with you, that's all."

He sighed, "So, this is related to the Power Curriculum Program, then?"

"Perceptive as always," Kamishirasawa answered, "I'll tell you more about it once you get here."

"R-right," Kenji nodded even though she couldn't see him, "I'll go, then"

"Well, if you understand, then I'll see you in fifteen minutes!"

"W-wait! What!? If class starts in fifteen minutes, then couldn't you have called me earlier!?"

The only answer Kenji received was the sound of the dial tone as she hung up the phone.

"AAAHHHH! Why do I have to deal with this!?"

Springing to his feet, Kenji rushed into his bedroom and threw on his uniform before rushing to the kitchen and grabbing something to eat along the way.

Confused by his hasty actions, Mizuki tilted her head to the side and frowned, "Kenji-kun…? I thought you said you were sleeping in?"

"Change of plans. I have to go to school!" Kenji yelled in an annoyed tone.

"Aw! And here I thought we'd get to spend the day together!"

Without gracing the green-haired vampire with a response, Kenji slipped on his shoes and headed out the door.

His school wasn't very far away, but Kenji still ran all the way there. He probably looked like a fool bolting down the street while scarfing down a cold onigiri with a pissed-off expression on his face, but at the moment he couldn't be bothered to care.

He gave the convenience store a quick glance as he rushed past in his haste. It looked like a wreck. Shards of broken glass from the windows were scattered across the sidewalk, and the sliding glass doors had been bent and warped by the explosion. Stray Foodstuffs and magazines from the shelves lay scattered about the inside, mingling with broken glass and cracked tiles.

It had been temporarily closed for the time being, and a few Anti-Skill vehicles were parked outside. They'd likely write off the damages and injuries to a rogue Esper attack or try to blame it on Skill-Out. Only he and Mizuki would know the full truth.

"Speaking of," he thought aloud, "I think somebody's out of a job… at least for the time being."

He continued running at top speed, and eventually found himself back at the gates of the school. How cruel, he mused, that just yesterday he had stood just here, thinking about how he wouldn't have to come back for a while.

He sighed and made his way to his classroom, taking note that it was completely empty sans Kamishirasawa herself. Being an honors-level class, it made sense that no one would need supplementary courses.

Kamishirasawa turned towards him and gave him a smile, "Ah, Kenji-kun! You made it after all! Have a seat. I'll meet with you after I get that one student started on his make-up work."

She motioned to a huge pile of papers stacked on her desk. There were two stacks, both towering over the stack of three textbooks sitting next to them.

"How much work did he miss?" Kenji asked, eyes wide.

"Oh, no… he didn't miss it. He was just too lazy to do it," She frowned.

Kenji had a couple of friends in his class, and outside of those few, he seldom paid any mind to the students around him. Even if someone else was in his class, he likely didn't know anything about them.

There was one exception he could think of off the top of his head. That person also happened to be lazy enough to pull something like this. Kurogoori Tetsuo.

In Kenji's mind, Tetsuo was the worst kind of person. He was incredibly brilliant— his IQ was scored at 255 by the most precise of Academy City's intelligence tests— _and _quite adept at fighting.

However, he rarely showed his skills for one reason and one reason only. He was the laziest person Kenji knew. Not just lazy, either. Tetsuo was apathetic, uncaring, unmotivated, and straight up _bored _all the time.

A few moments later the classroom doors slid open and Tetsuo stepped into the class, five minutes late and as disinterested as ever. He kept his icy blue eyes half-lidded as he glanced around the room, stopping once they fell upon his silver-haired teacher. His uniform was wrinkled, as if it had been thrown on the floor the previous night, and his hair was unkempt and tied back into a somewhat-bushy ponytail that stopped just below the shoulder blades.

"You're late," Kamishirasawa frowned, placing her hands on her hips.

Tetsuo shrugged in response without a word. Not even so much as a half-hearted apology.

Kamishirasawa sighed. She knew Tetsuo well enough. He wouldn't be bothered even if she scolded him, and her threats always glided off of him like water off of a duck's back.

Her two most effective tools, a strict personality and intimidation, were useless against the high school student. But that wasn't to say Kamishirasawa was powerless against him. She just needed to go out of her way to find something that worked.

"If it happens again, I'll be making a phone call to your sister!" she smiled with her eyes closed. Her appearance was deceptively gentle, and Kenji could almost feel the dark aura pouring off of her.

"Fine, fine, whatever," Tetsuo said finally. His voice sounded as bored as ever, but the fact that he had become instantly more agreeable shocked Kenji.

Who was Tetsuo's sister, and why did the mention of her name change his mind when nothing seemed to faze him?

Not that Kenji really cared. Kenji disliked everything about Tetsuo.

"Oh, so I'm not the only one who didn't do their homework?" he asked, looking at Kenji.

"He's not here for academic reasons," Kamishirasawa-sensei answered, "Regardless, since you _are _here for academic reasons, I have some work that I want you to complete."

She placed one of the stacks of paper on his desk and smiled, "There are some things I need to discuss with Kenji-kun. You're smart, I'm sure you can finish that before we get back!"

"You woke me up and told me to come to school to complete a packet I could've done at home?"

Kamishirasawa frowned, "You're right, you could've done this at home. All of this is the homework we've done over this past semester! If you had finished it then, you wouldn't even have to be here!"

He sighed and turned to look out the window. "Fine, fine, I'll get it done. If I finish this before you get back, I'm taking a nap."

Kamishirasawa seemed content with that answer, for she turned to Kenji and nodded, "Follow me, then."

She led Kenji out of the classroom and down the halls of the school. Kenji realized almost immediately that they were heading to the school's Skills Lab.

"Sorry for making you wait, Kenji-kun. Let me explain why you're here," she began, talking as she and Kenji walked down the barren halls, "As you already know, this school utilizes a PASS, or a Passive AIM Scanning System. That's what those metal-detector like devices at the main entrance of the building are for."

"Right," Kenji nodded.

"Well, since it's a _passive_ scanner, it doesn't even save any of the data it scans unless it picks up any irregularities. It's a good way to monitor students who might be developing new Esper abilities, or those whose abilities might be increasing in strength." she elaborated, "It's the reason you're here today."

"So… my abilities have increased?" Kenji asked.

"No. If it was something as simple as that, the school would've likely backed off and let things take its course," she admitted, "What our readings found was not an expansion of your AIM field, but rather, wild fluctuations of the field itself. These fluctuations are not uncommon in people developing new powers, but shouldn't be present in a fully developed Level 3."

"So, what does that mean, exactly?" Kenji asked, flinging his arms behind his head in a relaxed fashion, despite the serious nature of the situation.

"Basically, your AIM field is acting in an erratic and unpredictable manner, and we have yet to figure out why. I've been assigned to closely monitor your power development from now on, to ensure nothing serious happens."

Kenji furrowed his brow and lowered his hands, "Wait… not to sound rude or anything, but why you, specifically?"

As he spoke these words, the two arrived at the Skills Lab. Kamishirasawa held her ID up to the scanner and the doors opened with a mechanical click. As she opened the door, Kenji looked down into the open space. This was the largest part of the Skills Lab, and easily the largest room in the school, where most Espers were tested during the System Scans. The only Espers this room couldn't handle were the strongest Level 4s with particularly destructive abilities, or Espers with long range abilities. Espers like that were tested outside, but the results were still processed by the Skills Lab.

Smaller rooms and more hallways, sealed off from the main room by heavy metal doors, branched off in many directions. Some connected back to the normal halls of the school, while others weaved back and forth, connecting to other hallways of the skills lab and eventually looping back to the main room.

Immediately upon entering, Kamishirasawa spun on her heel and drove her fist into Kenji's gut. Much like Kenji's own ability, her fist carried way more weight than it should've.

"Wow, I'm impressed. You reacted quickly and increased the density of the air in front of your stomach to slow down the punch. If you hadn't done that, you would probably be vomiting right now."

In truth, Kenji had barely gotten a chance to react, and in fact still felt the urge to vomit. He wasn't really good at defensive fighting, but he didn't have time to dodge or counter with how close the two were.

"What… the hell!?" he asked, doubling over in pain.

"Oh, surprised, are you? Did you honestly think that only students have Esper abilities? Or maybe you're just shocked that you and I both possess Density Shift."

"Well, yeah, that caught me off guard too," he admitted, straightening himself up, "but why the hell did you _attack _me!?"

Kamishirasawa-sensei looked at Kenji with a serious expression.

"Your AIM field is currently very volatile, and it could be very dangerous to leave you in this state. However, it also means that your Personal Reality is more susceptible to expansion. Regarding you, my objectives are two-fold. To monitor your AIM field carefully to ensure your well-being, and to develop your powers further while you're Personal Reality in this compromised state. From the moment we entered this room, I stopped being your teacher. 'Kamishirasawa's Training from Hell' starts now!"

**Part 2**

"Ha… ha…"

Kenji ducked behind another wall as rubber bullets ricocheted off the wall beside him. He was currently running through a maze created within the large room of the Skills Lab. The room's floor was a deceptively simple grid-like pattern of tiles, underneath which sat a complex mechanism that could extend and retract a rectangular pillar from each of the grid's squares. By inputting a pattern into the computer, anything from simple dividing walls to complex mazes could be created.

As he caught his breath, he heard the familiar whir of the security robots motors as a number of them closed in on him. They were older models, thus a bit slower and less precise, but their sheer numbers made the fight particularly difficult. The fact that they had been modified for military training wasn't helping Kenji either.

"Damn, how many of these things am I even fighting!?"

Kamishirasawa wasn't kidding when she said she wasn't going to hold back. He had counted at least 30 of the drum-shaped security bots, and he was pretty sure there was even more than that.

He had only managed to take out five or six of them, and he was already exhausted.

The problem was his ability. While he had an effective range of about 20 meters within which he could alter the densities of objects, the problem was he could only alter the density of one object at a time. Not only that, but if anything left his range of 20 meters, its density would revert to normal.

In other words, he couldn't target all the security bots at once, and even if he made one float in the air aimlessly or too heavy for it to move, after he ran 20 meters, it would be able to chase him again.

No, his only choice was to break them, but as there were so many of them, getting one or two separated from the swarm was difficult, and the second he destroyed one, it sent out a distress signal that the others would home in on.

"I know Kamishirasawa-sensei won't let me die, but this is just brutal!"

One of the drum-bots came from around the corner and targeted him with its guns. Kenji was not good at using his ability defensively, so the best he could do was dodge out of the way. Even then, a few shots hit his leg and grazed his arm. Rubber bullets they may have been, but damn did they hurt like hell.

"Shit… I can't take much more of this…"

Kenji waited for the break in the robot's fire indicating it was reloading from its internal ammo reserves. That was his one shot at destroying the thing completely.

Once it stopped, he charged at it and made his entire forearm, including his fist, denser and plunged it into the robot's camera- it's structural weak point. He felt the metal frame cave in and the skin over his knuckles rip open from the force.

He cursed. This is why he had opted to kick the last five.

Making something denser was not the same as making something _stronger._ Even if he made his arm as dense as his powers would currently let him (his limit was about 20 times an object's normal density), he was essentially just swinging around a heavy wrecking ball made of his own flesh. If he kept it up too long, especially against metal robots, he might even break his arm.

"Damnit! I gotta figure out a better way to take these things out!"

He glanced over at the felled security bot next to him and sighed before noticing something glowing from within the fist-shaped hole where its "eye" used to be.

He kicked off the entire head of the robot and peered inside, where he noticed the robot's power pack.

The older security robots, he recalled, had been equipped with a particularly volatile experimental power source. With it, they could function longer than the new robots could ever hope to, but after an incident where Skill-Out began taking down security bots and collecting their power packs to use as bombs, the Board of Directors ordered the models to be discontinued and disposed of.

Briefly, Kenji wondered how his school managed to get a hold of them.

He grabbed the power pack and smiled, "It doesn't matter right now, with this, I can win!"

He heard the security bots growing closer, following the signal of the destroyed robot on the ground. Now was his chance. As a swarm of them turned the corner, he increased the power pack's density and threw it at the robot in the front.

Upon striking the metal frame, the power pack busted open and a large explosion engulfed the group of robots. Moreover, the power pack had triggered a chain reaction, setting off the power packs in the robots as they were damaged.

Kenji had shielded his face from the blast, but when he lowered his arms, he saw that not a single security bot remained standing.

"Haha!" he cheered, "it's over!"

"Oh yes," Kamishirasawa's voice rang out over the speakers in the room. She had likely been monitoring him for the entire duration from another room entirely, "Round one is definitely over. Now it's time for round two."

The walls started retracting back into the floor, and as they did, Kenji saw a number of security bots lined up and ready to attack. There were at least 50 of them, and they weren't the older models this time.

"These things are supposed to cost 1.2 million yen to produce!" Kenji yelled indignantly, "HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY OF THEM!?"

Instead of answering his question, Kamishirasawa spoke two words over the intercom.

"Have fun!"

**Part 3**

"Wow, you look like a train wreck!"

Upon returning home, these were the first words spoken to Kenji by Miyako Mizuki. The red-haired high school student glared daggers at the green-haired vampire before he collapsed onto the floor face-down.

"I can't… believe… round three… was 100 of them…." Kenji spoke, his voice muffled by the carpet.

His arms ached, his feet ached, he had gotten shot by enough rubber bullets to leave bruises, and he was probably still bleeding in places he had gotten scraped or grazed. His uniform was slightly torn and stained red here and there, and his red hair was a disheveled mess.

"A-ah, Kenji-kun!?"

Mizuki was, thankfully for Kenji, fully dressed, wearing the one of Kenji's loose-fitting shirts and the black pants from her work uniform.

"Are you okay? Here, let me help."

She headed into the bathroom and rummaged around until she located his first aid kit. Walking over to Kenji, she helped him up into a sitting position and began to remove his shirt.

"Wow, you got pretty beat up? Did you get into a street fight or something?" Mizuki asked.

Kenji shook his head and answered her bluntly.

"No. Training from Hell."

"Training, huh?" Mizuki smiled teasingly, "Aw, Kenji-kun's trying to get stronger so he can protect me!"

"What the hell gave you that impression? I don't even know you!"

"Yesterday."

"What?"

"Yesterday I gave you the chance to run. I gave you a way to escape from Greenhart. It wasn't your fight to begin with, yet you got involved anyway. Even if you don't know me, you still want to protect me, right?"

She blew up my favorite convenience store and hurt a bunch of a person," Kenji pointed out, "That pissed me off, that's all."

Mizuki frowned for a few seconds before grinning.

"Then why am I still here?"

Kenji didn't have a rebuttal to that.

Seeing that she had won, Mizuki smiled and began dressing Kenji's wounds.

"Maybe you don't know me yet," Mizuki spoke softly, "That's fine, I don't know much about you either. But isn't that how all people are? Even close friends were once perfect strangers."

"Don't get all philosophical while gazing at my abs. It's creepy."

Mizuki blushed, "I-I AM NOT!"

"Oh come on, you were looking at them the whole time!"

"Don't try to tell me you weren't checking me out while I was walking around naked!"

"Don't change the subject!" Kenji frowned, "and I kept telling you to put some damn clothes on!"

"W-whatever!" Mizuki looked away, "For that, you're taking me out clothes shopping!"

"W-what!? What do you mean 'for that'!? What the hell did I do!?"

"You should know better than to hassle a woman while she's trying to help you, you know!"

"What does that have to do with anything!?"

Kenji sighed as Mizuki continued to patch him up as best as she could. He expected her to be inexperienced at first aid considering she was a nigh-immortal vampire who probably seldom needed it, but she was actually rather skilled.

Despite her being a vampire, Mizuki was very much human. Kenji sighed. Normally he was good at making predictions of how something would turn out based on anime he's watched or manga he's read. Oddly enough, as ridiculous as some of the situations were, in this crazy world called Academy City life seemed to take a lot of cues from the kind of cliché scenarios you'd expect to see in anime.

For instance, a vampire was now living in his house.

Still, he had always figured that the vampires in anime and manga were just made to be more human to fill some sort of cutesy monster-girl role and that if real vampires actually did exist, they'd wind up being infinitely more terrifying.

He suddenly wondered if fictional creatures as terrifying as Nyarlathotep were also simply relatable, cute schoolgirls.

He shook his head. What a ridiculous thought.

"Ah! Done!" Mizuki exclaimed, nodding to herself.

Kenji looked down and inspected her work. The bandages had been well-wrapped and he could feel the cold wetness of the antiseptic on the worst of his cuts.

"Thanks, Miyako-san," Kenji replied, standing up. His body was still slightly sore, but he was feeling a lot better now that he had been patched up. The gauze Kenji kept in his first aid kit had pain relieving properties and the antiseptic contained a compound that would accelerate his healing. He'd be fine in a few days.

_"__Unless tomorrow's training session turns out to be just as brutal…"_

Disregarding this thought, Kenji retrieved a new shirt from his bedroom, slipped it on, and headed for the door.

"Where are you going so suddenly?" Mizuki asked.

"What do you mean 'where'?" Kenji asked her indignantly, "You said you were going to force me to go clothes shopping, right?"

Mizuki smiled, hooking her arm around his, "You're coming with me no matter what!"

"Oi! Let go of my arm!"

"Don't go all red-faced on me when I pick out some sexy underwear, okay?"

"What the hell do you mean by that!?"

"I know a place that sells underwear that cover only what's necessary!"

"Oi! Don't be dragging me to strange places like that! And wait a minute, how long have you even been in Academy City anyway!? Don't tell me you went out of your way looking for a shop like that!? You really are shameless!"

**Part 4**

"Geez," Kenji leaned back against the seat as he sighed. He and Mizuki had found their way to an old café after a day of clothes shopping. Much to the chagrin of Kenji, Mizuki had been as shameless as possible, and many people had come to certain conclusions about their relationship because of her actions.

Mizuki sat across from him, happily munching on a slice of strawberry shortcake contently. For her, the day had gone swimmingly, and she now had a new summer wardrobe.

She had changed out of Kenji's shirt and her work pants into something decidedly more feminine; a sky blue spaghetti-strap tank top and a blue denim skirt.

"So, I think there's one more place I'd like to stop by before heading back home, okay!?"

Kenji groaned.

"My wallet can't handle this kind of abuse!"

She smiled, ignoring his protests, and quickly finished up her cake. Springing to her feet, she whirled around and smiled.

"Alright! Let's go! One more stop!"

She rushed hurriedly out the door, leaving Kenji with the bill and her bags. By the time he had finished paying and left the café, she was nowhere in sight. In his current state, he wasn't really looking forward to going on a wild-goose chase.

"If you're looking for that green-haired girl, some guy in a dark cloak came up and pulled her into that alleyway over there."

Kenji turned around to look at the person who had told him that casually.

The familiar voice belonged to none other than Kurogoori Tetsuo. He was walking down the street with a singular shopping bag in one hand and the other shoved in his pocket. He sported the same bored look on his face, but he had his phone out, presumably to report what had just happened.

Tetsuo may have been lazy, but he wasn't a liar. He was too lazy and uncaring to pull a stupid prank like that. He must've really seen someone snatch up Mizuki.

Kenji took off down the alleyway and looked around. Empty. The entire alleyway was empty, and there was no way out. The alley came to a dead end and there wasn't so much as a fire-escape to climb up to the rooftops above.

Kenji's face paled.

No.

No way.

This wasn't happening.

She was right there. She had been right in front of him not a minute ago, smiling happily and pestering him. The atmosphere had been lighthearted and she had been enjoying herself.

Now she was gone. Gone from his sights and kidnapped, likely by the second magician she said had attacked her two nights ago, and he had no way of knowing where she was.

"Damnit!" Kenji cursed.

He rushed out of the alleyway and looked around, rage taking the place of his previous worry.

"She's gone!" he ran up to Tetsuo and grabbed his collar harshly.

"So?" Tetsuo asked, meeting Kenji's fierce amber gaze with a bored, icy look of his own.

"What do you mean 'so'? Why the hell didn't you stop them!?"

"You're angry that you lost sight of that girl and failed to protect her, and now you're redirecting that anger and taking it out on me. Isn't that a bit unfair?"

Kenji gritted his teeth, "Unfair!? I'm asking you why the hell you stood by and watched a girl being kidnapped!"

"I was about to call Anti-skill. Isn't that what a normal person would do?"

"Yeah, except you're a Level 3 like me! You had the power to step in and help her!"

"No, I'm not like you." Tetsuo pointed out, pulling Kenji's wrists off of his collar, "Right now, you're letting your emotions get the better of you. I'm calm in this situation because I'm thinking rationally. Besides, I didn't even know that girl. I'm not going to go out of my way to help a stranger."

"Even if they're being _kidnapped!?_" Kenji yelled.

"I'm not some kind of damn hero. If I went out of my way to help everyone who needed it, I'd be running around all day like a moron. That would be a pain in the ass. Stop wasting your time yelling at me and look for your damn friend."

With that, Tetsuo turned around and headed off without another word.

Kenji gritted his teeth and glared furiously at the back of his blue-haired classmate's head.

"Damnit!" Kenji cursed, "How the hell am I even going to find her!? I don't even know where to start looking!"

"I can help you with that."

He jumped and whirled around. The voice behind him was familiar as well.

"Greenhart," he identified with venom in his voice. He turned around and glared at the woman standing behind him.

"Oho! Your girlfriend told you my name, then?" the woman smiled, adjusting her witch hat, "Then she probably also told you that I completely threw yesterday's fight, or at least acknowledged that I'm normally stronger. Anyway, I'm here to help you find the vampire."

"And why the hell would I even trust you?" Kenji asked, frowning, "This isn't some kind of game where the protagonist beats up some troublemakers then invites them over for tea!"

The Greenhart smiled wryly.

"Honestly, I don't think you have much of a choice. If you rejected my help, who would you go to? Let me tell you one thing. If _that person _manages to get the vampire out of Academy City, she'll be as good as dead."

Kenji gritted his teeth, "You attacked us out of nowhere and blew up a convenience store! Why would you want to help me now?"

"My hands were tied. See, I'm not one of those silly religious nuts that gain their powers through prayer and faith. I'm a rogue witch who uses the occult outside of religion. Unfortunately, I had been captured by the Irish Catholic Church and was presented with an ultimatum. Word with us or die. I planned to betray them the second they released me, but up until yesterday, they were in possession of this."

She held out her hand and summoned her Grimoire from thin air.

"So, what'll it be? Trust me, or lose your girlfriend forever?"

"Fine, I'll accept your offer, but I still don't trust you," Kenji replied, "Oh, and she's _not _my girlfriend."

"Oh, really now? That's good to hear."

That caught Kenji off-guard.

"Huh? Why?"

The witch-hat clad woman cocked her head to the side and smiled, "Because she's kind of cute."

**Part 5**

"Are you sure it's here?"

Greenhart could understand why he wasn't quite so sure. The abandoned parking garage they had been led to by following her tracing magic was completely barren. There weren't even any signs that Skill-Out gangs used it as a hide-out. Not even a speck of graffiti lined the dull grey walls.

It was quite unsettling, to be honest, but Kenji couldn't quite put his finger on why.

"I know it seems empty, but this is definitely where _that person_ is."

As if to exemplify her point, a knife flew at them from out of nowhere and landed between Kenji's feet. From somewhere within the empty parking garage, he heard a male voice laced with a thick Irish accent.

"Come any closer and the harlot's as good as dead."

Neither of them could see the voice's owner, but Greenhart's eyes narrowed as she recognized it.

"Cut the shit, O'Reilly. We both know you need her alive."

"Ohoh!" he laughed gaudily, "So the lass stabs me in the back once she's got her hands on her wee lit'l book? How cute."

Greenhart gritted her teeth, but didn't give O'Reilly a reply. Instead, she turned to Kenji and spoke in a hushed whisper.

"He can't see us. If he could, he would've noticed I was with you before I spoke up."

"You're quite right, I can't see you…" the voice replied.

Suddenly, figure wearing a dark brown hooded cloak appeared before them out of misty shadows. He apparently wore a pair of round-framed glasses, for the dim blue lights of the parking garage reflected off of the lenses and glowed a white-blue that cut through the shadowy darkness of his cloaked face.

"…but I know _exactly_ where ye are!"

Both Kenji and Greenhart jumped backwards away from the figure. Greenhart readied her Grimoire, while Kenji crouched into a defensive stance.

"Ohoh, A fight, is it?" a few circular ruins appeared in the air in front of him, "Then I shall happily oblige!"

Knives shot out of the runes like gunfire, flying through the air and landing with little clinks on the ground or striking the back wall and sticking into it.

Kenji frowned. His training had done quite a number on him. He honestly wasn't sure how long he could keep up a full-fledged fight. However, just as he was thinking this, something else interrupted his thoughts.

_"__Kenji, this is Greenhart… I'm communicating to you through a magic wavelength. Don't try to reply, you'll only end up damaging your body. Listen… fighting him isn't important. I'll tell you right now… he's stronger than you. We need to look for that vampire as quickly as possible."_

Kenji met her gaze with his own, telling her that he understood.

She smiled and turned towards O'Reilly, aiming her Grimoire at him. Meeting his projectile knifes, a focused stream of star-shaped projectiles comprised of magical energy shot forth from the runes etched onto the page she had opened.

He held up a hand towards the incoming volley and a smaller rune appeared. A large, metallic hemisphere exploded outwards from the rune and covered him from the area of the blast.

Kenji saw this as his opportunity. He quickly ran past the shower of knives spraying from the magic runes and headed for the stairwell. He was going to check the upper levels for any signs of Mizuki.

Unfortunately, once he set foot on one of the steps, metallic spears shot forth from the walls and stabbed his leg. He suppressed his urge to yell out in pain, but it seemed that the spell's activation could still be detected by O'Reilly. The cloaked man turned around and smiled.

"What? Did you honestly think I wouldn't expect somethin' like that? Naïve lad!"

Instead of firing aimlessly, Kenji noticed that O'Reilly was instead focusing his knives solely on Greenhart. She was focusing on both exuding some form of magic barrier and firing her star shots, but some of the knives were making it through, cutting at her arms and legs.

Kenji frowned. With his leg injured like this, he wouldn't be able to run away or find Mizuki. His only choice was clear.

He pulled something from his pockets and threw it at O'Reilly's face.

The man had not been expecting it, so instead of blocking it, it had struck him in the face and knocked off his cloak's hood.

Kenji had thrown one of his own knives at him. In fact, it was the first knife O'Reilly sent their way, which Kenji had picked up before jumping back after he first appeared.

He raised his head back up, and Kenji got a good look at his face for the first time. He looked to be around middle-aged, for while he was not covered with wrinkles, there were some pretty deep-set lines etched into his face. His left eye was now closed and blood streamed from the wound, and his glasses had been shattered and tossed to the ground from Kenji's attack. His hair was receding, but what he did have was colored a bright orange and spiked upwards like fire.

"Ohoh, cheeky lit'l one we have here."

He didn't even look the least bit bothered by his eye. In fact, instead of anger, he had a sadistic grin plastered over his face.

"Now, how many different ways can I butcher you, member of the Science Side!"

He dispersed the knife-throwing runes with a wave of his hand and pulled a knife with a bent blade (Kenji believed they called it a kukri) out of his cloak. He pointed it at Kenji, and numerous wooden stakes erupted from the ground.

"Vampire hunting tools!?" Greenhart exclaimed.

Kenji jumped out of the way of the spikes and charged forwards towards O'Reilly. The mage seemed rather adamant about keeping them at bay, so Kenji figured he was bad at fighting in close-quarters.

"In these kinds of situations, pushing forwards is the best option!"

Kenji swung a heavy punch at O'Reilly and felt it collide with the mage's face. Yet even as he was knocked back, O'Reilly never lost the sadistic look he wore on his face. It honestly didn't even look like he had been injured.

"Hehehe…"

Kenji realized too late why he was laughing. A magic rune appeared on the ground below him and more metal spears shot up from the ground and impaled the red-haired high school student.

Kenji cursed as he looked down. They had missed his chest, but one had impaled his shoulder and another ran through his abdomen a little off to one side. Blood quickly soaked through the fabric of his shirt as he collapsed to the ground.

Greenhart was yelling something that Kenji couldn't understand in his current state. In fact, it wasn't just his hearing. Kenji's vision was beginning to blur too. He tried to stand up again, but he just wound up falling over.

He watched silently as Greenhart fought her way over to where he was lying, unable to do anything. Tetsuo may have been an asshole, but his words weren't completely wrong. Kenji had been the one who was unable to protect Mizuki in the end.

He didn't know why, but the fact that he had failed her like this made him immeasurably angry at himself. It was a completely irrational feeling. She was more-or-less a stranger that he had known for two days. Why was he so adamant about protecting her?

He couldn't come up with an answer for that, but there was one thing he did know.

That battle was too short. He didn't even stand a chance against O'Reilly.

At that thought, Kenji's world faded to black.

* * *

**AN: Here's Chapter 2. I would've honestly preferred to have gotten this out a day earlier, but my computer broke and I had to spend the majority of yesterday fixing it. I'm going to try to stick to the same weekly update schedule I've set for myself, but with college having started today, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to stick to that. I'd rather give you guys a good story than rush chapters, so I'll see how it all plays out in the end.**

**Eventually I'll try to get some of the illustrations done for Volume 1 and post these chapters on my DeviantArt, but honestly I've been really busy and it's only going to get worse. For now, expect Project Kyuketsuki to stay a text-only fanfiction for now.**


	4. Are You Sleeping?

_**Disclaimer: This fanfiction is based off of To Aru Majutsu no Index and its various spin-off series. All characters, settings, and concepts present in the original works are property of Kazuma Kamachi and ASCII Media Works, and I claim no ownership.**_

* * *

**-Volume 1-**

**Chapter 3**

**The Vampire and the Sun**

**Part 1**

Kenji had expected to wake up in a hospital, eyes blinded with artificial light and nostrils met with the harsh sterile smell that permeated throughout the building. He expected to hear the monotonous beeping of a heart monitor and feel either a dull ache or numbness throughout his entire body.

Perhaps that's why he was so shocked when he awoke. He opened his eyes slowly and immediately established that he was in either a student dorm or an apartment. He rested upon a small brown couch that was just long enough to accommodate him, albeit with his feet hiked up on the armrest. A small table sat just out of arm's reach with an inviting bowl of mandarins placed at its center.

Below him, light beige carpeted floors spread out and touched the base of the off-white walls. Along them sat various bookshelves and a television, only interrupted by the sliding glass doors leading to the apartment's balcony.

Beyond this, his vision was obscured by the wall of couch behind him. Even if he could see the area behind him, so many apartments were built the same that even looking around wouldn't even tell him what district he was in, let alone give him a hint to who owned the place.

In his anxiousness to establish where he was, he didn't notice that he wasn't in any amount of pain despite his injuries. Now that he had, he was curious to inspect the extent of the damage. Perhaps it had merely been an illusion or something of the like.

An off-white blanket had been placed over him which he cast aside swiftly. Looking down, he noticed two things. The first was that he was not wearing a shirt. Fair enough, he supposed, since it had been soaked with blood and tattered from the battle.

The second thing he noticed was what troubled him.

His injuries were fully healed.

No blood, no scars. He was beginning to wonder if it all _had _been an illusion or some sort of twisted nightmare where he could feel pain.

_"__No, Greenhart would've warned me ahead of time… if anything, I was probably just healed with magic."_

Kenji frowned. Greenhart. He didn't have a reason to trust her, but at the same reason, he really hoped he could. With Mizuki gone, she was his sole guide to the world of magic, and without her, he'd have no hope of rescuing the vampire from O'Reilly. If he found out she was against him as well, he would be powerless to save Mizuki.

Regardless of whether Kenji wanted to or not, he had to admit that the vampire had grown on him. He hadn't known Mizuki for long, but the thought of something bad happening to her made him all the more anxious about this whole situation.

_"__But isn't that a natural response to the idea of someone getting hurt? I mean, it's not like I've known her for very long, and honestly she's been quite troublesome…"_

Before that train of thought could progress, he heard a door open behind him. The sound had startled him and he nearly rolled off the couch, but he quickly caught himself and pulled himself into a sitting position so he could get a better view of the person entering.

Who he saw made him fall off the couch entirely.

"Ka-Ka-Kamishirasawa-sensei!?" he yelled, eyes wide as he looked up at the silver-haired teacher from his new position on the floor.

"Oh, Kenji-kun, you're awake!" she chimed happily, leaning against the back of the couch and throwing him an almost-mischievous grin. Your cosplaying friend left earlier, but she said she'll be back to make sure you're okay."

"Cosplayin- oh, Greenhart," Kenji noted. If Kamishirasawa though Greenhart was a cosplayer, then chances were Greenhart hadn't filled her in on the whole magic thing yet.

Kenji didn't want to "play along", only to find out that Kamishirasawa knew everything, yet he also was wary about telling his teacher too much. To play it safe, he took a third option.

"W-what… what happened?" Kenji asked.

"You don't remember? Apparently you and that cosplaying girl got attacked by a strange Esper. I don't know much about the details, but from the looks of it you're fine."

Kenji shook his head, "Ah, is that right? Damn, I can't remember anything…"

_"__Okay, so Kamishirasawa-sensei doesn't know about magic… but that raises the question, how did Greenhart find her?"_

"I don't know the situation, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but do you know why Greenhart— er, my cosplaying friend, that is— brought me to you?"

"Oh, she didn't. She was tending your wounds when I came across you two," Kamishirasawa frowned, placing her hand on her chin, "It's odd, though… there was a lot of blood for you not having a scratch on you. Does your friend have some sort of healing ability?"

"Erm, yeah!" Kenji lied, "She told me something like that once."

Kamishirasawa smiled, "That seems like a useful ability…"

Kenji nodded, a bit perturbed by the sadistic twinkle in his teacher's eye.

"If you have a friend like that, I don't have to worry about pushing you too hard during training!"

"Please don't say such things with a pleasant smile on your face…" Kenji paled.

Before Kamishirasawa could respond, the sound of a loud thud at the door interrupted the somewhat lax atmosphere.

"My my, that wasn't a knock," Kamishirasawa pointed out.

Kenji nodded, and the two made their way to the door on edge. Upon opening the door, the bloodied form of Marisa Greenhart stumbled in.

"Oh!? What happened here?" Kamishirasawa asked.

"Greenhart!" Kenji exclaimed, catching her as she stumbled once more.

"I'm fine," Greenhart replied, straightening herself, "I… Arakuyo-san, I have something to discuss with you in private."

For a split-second, Kamishirasawa let her eyebrow raise as she shot both Kenji and Greenhart a questioning look. In the next moment, her expression reverted to a pleasant smile as she turned around and waved her hand dismissively.

"Oh, no! Don't mind me! I'll leave you two alone, then. Ah, and that shirt over there on the table is for you, in case you're feeling self-conscious in front of your friend~!"

Kenji stiffened slightly, but otherwise made a conscious effort to ignore that last part.

Kamishirasawa giggled at Kenji's stiffness and walked off into another room— what Kenji assumed to be the bedroom— and left Kenji and Greenhart alone.

"What happened!?" Kenji asked in a low voice. While his sensei had said she'd leave them alone, Kenji wasn't ready to loudly talk about vampires and magicians while she was just in the other room.

"O'Reilly's set traps the entire parking garage. It's almost impossible to even get in. I don't think it's just us, though. Homeless people, stray cats. Anyone who steps foot in the parking garage will set them off. He's not taking any chances."

After hearing Greenhart's explanation, Kenji frowned, "Why is he still at the garage? If he's that worried about us attacking him again, shouldn't he just move?"

Greenhart nodded, "Yeah, and I believe that if he had the opportunity to, he would. However, it's _that item _that's keeping him stuck at the parking garage for now."

"That item?"

"_Stoker's Coffin_," Greenhart provided, "It's an occult artifact designed to trap vampires."

"Stoker?" Kenji echoed, "Like Bram Stoker, the author of _Dracula_?"

"Yes. Stoker was allegedly the first human to encounter a vampire, and it's also believed that he was the first human to become a vampire through a magic ritual. He implanted false fears and perceptions about vampires so that they may feed upon humans relatively unnoticed, but a side effect was that humans also began to hunt and exorcize vampires as demonic beings. Sometime before his death, he was discovered by the Irish Catholic Church and imprisoned in a magically-imbued _coffin _that allowed the church to experiment on him and eventually kill him. They wrote his death off as a series of strokes and burned his mutilated body to destroy the evidence. Multiple _Stoker's Coffins _have been produced over the years, so the one O'Reilly possesses isn't necessarily the original coffin. However, they all hold the same function; to capture and imprison any vampire."

Kenji clenched his teeth, "So that's how it is. But that doesn't explain why he hasn't moved."

"Ah, about that," Greenhart continued, "All _Stoker's Coffins _have a defense mechanism that prevents a rogue or defunct magician from releasing a vampire on a whim. Essentially, to release a vampire, a certain amount of time is needed for an unsealing ritual, during which the _Coffin_ cannot be moved. The problem is that _Stoker's Coffins _are magically primitive devices. They cannot detect whether or not they contain a vampire, so to open one at all, you need to perform the full unsealing ritual. My guess is that O'Reilly started the unsealing process before we arrived, and now is stuck at the parking garage even though we know he's already there."

Kenji sighed, "So, how long do we have?"

Greenhart shook her head, "I have no way of knowing. Regardless, I believe now would be the best time to strike. From what I could sense, O'Reilly has booby trapped the whole garage. He couldn't have done all that without draining his reserves of magical energy. He's probably at his limit, so the sooner we make our move, the better. You're fine, right?"

"Yeah, I'm fully healed," Kenji pointed out, "That was you, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Greenhart replied, holding up a small, now empty bottle "Vampire platelets. Basically the vampire's healing factor. Unfortunately, I don't have any more of it, so I'll have to sit this one out."

Kenji gulped. O'Reilly was so strong before even when Greenhart was helping him, and now he'd have to fight him alone. Even if Greenhart was right and O'Reilly was low on energy, the red-haired high school student couldn't see him being any less intimidating as an opponent.

He frowned. No. He could do this. He had to. This may well be his only chance to save Mizuki. To hell if he was going to throw it away because he was scared at fighting alone.

He just had to do what he did best- take all his cues from anime and manga and hope that real life was just as predictable and forgiving.

_"__Okay, Kenji… charging in with reckless determination didn't work… that means in order to beat him, I have to formulate a plan…"_

Suddenly, something sitting on the counter of the kitchenette, just behind where Greenhart was standing, caught his eye and he grinned. The mental gears were turning.

"I got it. Striking now is our best chance, then?"

Greenhart nodded.

Kenji smirked and threw on the button-up shirt Kamishirasawa had laid out for him as he headed out the door.

"Wish me luck," he waved to Greenhart before running out the door and off in the direction of his high school. In his hands he held the white I.D. card he had taken from the counter of Kamishirasawa's apartment.

_"__Mizuki… don't worry… I'm not going to let you down twice!"_

**Between the Lines 1**

"Damn that traitorous harlot…"

The thick Irish accent of O'Reilly echoed off the stone walls of the top-most floor of the abandoned parking garage.

The voice managed to rouse a certain vampire from a magically induced slumber. It seemed that O'Reilly's power was waning, and the spell he had cast upon her was starting to wear off.

Mizuki took the brief opportunity to assess the situation.

She had been kidnapped, she remembered that much, and at one point while she was still in a half-asleep state, she could hear the shouts of Kenji and the other witch, Greenhart, but she couldn't quite bring herself to focus on it at the time.

Now, however, her mind was clearing up, and she realized just what was going on around her.

_"__Huh… I still can't move? I guess my body's numb… I can feel the spell going away, so it should clear up in a bit… until then, I need to think of a way to get out of here…"_

Mizuki would've frowned if she could have, but she would have to settle for thinking about frowning until she could move again.

_"__It's kind of ironic, I've been running from these guys for a while now… but just when I find someone willing to protect me, I go and get myself captured."_

Mizuki stopped that train of thought. But wait, was it truly ironic? After all, wasn't it the fact that she had someone to protect her that made her let her guard down? If she had been anxious about running into O'Reilly the whole time, she likely wouldn't have gotten caught so easily.

She shook her head, or would have if she could, but instead found herself thinking about _that person._

_"__Kenji…" _She thought to herself.

It wasn't love, but the moment she laid eyes on Arakuyo Kenji, she got that sort of feeling like she just knew she could trust him. That moment in the convenience store, when he decided to protect her instead of run, only affirmed that feeling.

But she wasn't weak. She wasn't the kind of person who'd wait around for someone to rescue her if she didn't need it.

_"__A plan… I need a plan…"_

"W-what!? Again!? Someone's triggering the traps again!? Maybe it's just a stray animal…"

O'Reilly's voice once again filled the empty room and bounced off the walls, disrupting Mizuki's train of thought.

"Hm… it's not like it's worth checking out… unless…"

She could hear the Irishman pace back and forth as if he was brooding over something, then, with an irritated snarl, he yelled, "Damn… no stray animal would try to get in multiple times! The fact that the traps are still being set off means that someone's deliberately trying to get in!"

Mizuki heard O'Reilly storm down the stairs loudly and smiled.

The feeling in her face was coming back. She wouldn't have to wait too long before she could move.

"OOOIIII! O'REILLY YOU BASTARD!"

Mizuki instantly recognized that voice.

_"__Ah, well, it looks like I don't have to worry about an escape plan anymore… maybe just one more time… I'll let that person protect me."_

**Part 2**

When Kenji heard the loud footsteps and thickly accented taunts, he smiled and ducked behind the wall at the entrance to the parking garage. Despite the traps, he had managed to lure O'Reilly down to the ground floor.

Inside the garage, just at the entrance, was a number of small rocks taken from the ground nearby.

Kenji had thrown them for one simple reason.

The traps were triggered by pressure.

His reasoning had been simple: Like Espers, magicians likely had a scope of specific strengths and weaknesses. For instance, while Kenji was excellent on manipulating densities of regularly shaped items, the complex geometric calculations he'd have to preform to change something with a more organic shape was difficult for him. Likewise, O'Reilly's metal manipulation formed static, regular shapes, and while Kenji didn't doubt that magic traps triggered by something as abstract as "life energy" could be constructed, he had assumed that O'Reilly's scope of magic did not cover such traps.

His assumption had been merely a hunch, and had it not worked, his following plan would've fallen apart.

In anime and manga, there were two ways to win against an opponent stronger than yourself; through sheer determination or by outwitting them. He had already tried the determination part, but he had learned that standing up after being impaled was a hell of a lot harder than it looked.

Kenji took a few deep breaths and lowered the density of his own body until he was slowly floating upwards.

In truth, he hated lowering the density of his own body.

Because of the nature of his powers, manipulating the density of an object without changing its volume involved a precise type of energy manipulation that Kenji did mostly on instinct. While it was not more difficult to decrease the mass of an object in comparison to increasing it, it required a certain amount of concentration if he wanted it to consciously revert to its normal density. With normal objects, it was fine; even if he lost concentration and couldn't revert it back, he could always move himself out of its range. Unfortunately, his body was always the origin, and if he lost concentration and became stuck in a lighter form, he would wind up dying sooner or later from the long-term effects.

Still, thinking about that kind of thing while he was doing it was just asking for trouble. He instead focused solely on his plan, which had been going smoothly so far. Granted, his plan wasn't very far along at the moment, but as long as he focused on the smooth parts and tried to ignore any potential failures, he could convince himself through confirmation bias that his plan was overall a good idea.

Once he reached the top of the building, he let his density return to normal and fell quickly onto the roof.

"Good, no traps here," he noted to himself.

He placed his hands on the ground and a cylindrical section of concrete began dissipating as dust particles around him. Since his powers involved manipulating both sides of the density equation, he could "disintegrate" nearly anything by dispersing its particles into a larger volume, but once again he was limited to distance and size, and it worked best on geometrically regular shapes. It also took a certain amount of time, so he couldn't use it to destroy bullets or fast moving projectiles.

Still, the hole he had created in the roof of the parking garage was sizable enough that he could jump down into it easily. Taking a look down into the top floor of the garage, he saw a number of things.

The first thing he noticed was the glowing lights of a rune surrounding an ancient-looking coffin, standing upright and wrapped with chains.

The second thing he noticed was Mizuki, who was lying on the ground in a heap. It was too dark in the garage for him to tell if she was hurt or not, but, at least according to Greenhart, O'Reilly wanted her alive.

The third thing he noticed made him pull his head out of the makeshift entry he had made, just in time to avoid a volley of iron spikes shooting straight out of the ground.

A pair of floating orbs of iron floated out of the hole and shot more spikes at Kenji, and he was forced to duck behind a pair of large air vents.

"Damn! Sentinels? Greenhart didn't warn me about Sentinels!"

Then again, Kenji realized, they were on the top floor. It was likely Greenhart simply hadn't gotten up far enough to establish their presence.

_"__Regardless. If the Sentinels can sense me, than so can-"_

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of clapping as heavy steps on the concrete could be heard. Kenji had no idea how O'Reilly had gotten up here so fast, but his plan had essentially been foiled.

"Oh, that's rich! What!? Did you expect I would fall for your little rat trap while you snatched the lass away from me and saunter off?"

Kenji sighed melodramatically and shrugged his shoulders as he slid out from behind his cover.

"Well, you missed the part where I destroy the coffin and fly away on the invisible escape helicopter. But yeah, that's the gist of it."

Kenji's response was met with much hostility in the form of metal spears sent flying in his general direction. Kenji ducked back behind the air vents. He needed a new plan, and fast.

"If I didn't know you were trying to infuriate me I'd call your question into sanity, young lad."

"No, really, we have those here," Kenji pointed out, "We've also discovered at least fifteen new elements and discovered the 11th dimension. You outsiders really can't keep up."

"Your 'science' is putrid to me," O'Reilly sneered, "How deeply do you think the occult is ingrained in this city? Or are you ignorant to even that? Perhaps you have yet to be exposed to the darkness around you!"

The metal probes swerved around on either side of the air vents and Kenji smiled. They had effectively flanked him, but that was inconsequential. It was the very fact that O'Reilly had attacked him from around the vents as opposed to through them that told Kenji what he needed to know.

The occult was not like Esper abilities. O'Reilly could not manipulate natural metal. He could only create supernatural metal that he bent to his will, but the air vents would serve to insulate him from any attacks, and since O'Reilly couldn't attack him directly with them, they were his safest option.

He dove into the air vents and punched through the rotating fan blades within. He didn't need to go far; only the first floor. The sentinels were small enough that they could follow him, but they wouldn't be able to hit him like this. They could only attack him from behind, and he was compressing the air behind him to create a shield that could stop their attacks.

His plan was working after all.

Seeing flickers of light through a grate in the side of the air vent, he looked out and smiled. This was the top floor. Kicking the grate, he popped it out of the side of the duct and leapt into the room.

"Alright now to find-"

His thoughts were cut off when the metal grate he had kicked off of its hinges flew back and struck him in the back of his head. Clutching his battered cranium with both hands, he turned around and saw an angry Mizuki glaring at him.

"I don't even know how long I've been stuck here, and your idea of a rescue mission is dropping a grate on my head!?"

Kenji thought back to the brief glance of the top floor he got before he was noticed by the sentinels. Come to think of it, Mizuki had been lying underneath the air vent.

"You know, that's not exactly the kind of response I'd expect from someone here to save you!"

"I didn't even need saving!" Mizuki shot back, "O'Reilly exhausted himself and I managed to wake up early! I just needed to wait until the feeling came back to my bod-"

Before she could finish, she stumbled forwards into Kenji.

"S-sorry!" she replied instantly, pulling away from him.

It was dark in the parking garage, but he was sure he could see some red on her cheeks.

For some reason, her banter had lightened the atmosphere, and for a brief moment he forgot about the urgency of the situation.

That was, of course, until he noticed the heavy footsteps of O'Reilly echoing throughout the empty parking complex.

"Okay, that was clever, I'll admit," O'Reilly frowned, "But what made you think I'd let you escape. Even if you run, I can track her anywhere you could go."

Kenji smirked, "Don't underestimate me, O'Reilly!"

The red haired high-school student crouched into a fighting stance and cracked his knuckles.

O'Reilly's face twisted into a manic grin, "Oho!? You want to fight again? What can you do against me?"

Suddenly, the entire building shook, and O'Reilly's eyes widened.

Kenji smiled, "Yesterday, the parking garage felt unusually empty… then I realized why. This building has no interior support structures. The way this building's constructed, all the weight is distributed to the four corner supports…"

Kenji motioned to the thick support structures lining each of the four corners casually.

"So, what do you suppose would happen if someone put a bunch of holes in them with their Esper ability?"

The parking garage shook again, and cracks began to appear in the floor.

Kenji's plan hadn't begun by triggering the traps. Instead, he had compromised one of the support structures of the building by dispersing holes of material into the air.

"You better not let that fancy box get smashed up or buried," Kenji pointed out, "That's important to you, right?"

O'Reilly barely had time to act shocked when the entire parking complex began shaking and crumbling, leaning to one side.

Kenji snatched up Mizuki bridal-style and rushed up the stairs to the top floor.

"W-wait!" Mizuki asked, "Why the hell are we going up?"

"Did you really think I planned to get buried too?"

Kenji emerged onto the roof even as the whole building began crumbling to one side. The roof was now at a shallow incline, and it was getting more severe by the second.

Kenji took one deep breath and rushed up the incline with the green-haired vampire in his arms before jumping off the top and landing roughly on the roof of an adjacent building.

"Are you alright, Miyako-san?"

"Yeah, just tired," Mizuki replied, averting her eyes. Despite her normally playful attitude, she was quite flustered after being carried like that.

Kenji looked back at the building as he watched it collapse. No sign of O'Reilly anywhere.

"It looks like we've won, but I won't be satisfied with something as open-ended as this. We should be on our toes in case he has something else planned."

Mizuki nodded, "Let's get out of here before-"

Suddenly, the pile of rubble shifted behind them, and from the dust cloud they noticed a smooth sphere or mystical steel begin to crumble as O'Reilly and _Stoker's Coffin_ emerged, safe.

"Oi, laddie," O'Reilly grinned maniacally, "That was a clever trick, I'll admit, but what was that supposed to accomplish?"

Kenji rolled his eyes, "Oh, you know, scheduled demolition. Glad you made it out alright."

"Don't mock me lad," O'Reilly yelled, eyes filled with fury.

He held out his hand and the sphere shifted fluidly from its static shape to a large chain that flew atop the building and wrapped around Kenji's leg. Before Kenji could react, O'Reilly pulled Kenji down off of the roof and slammed him into a pile of rubble.

Mizuki gasped, but Kenji stirred and soon dragged himself to his feet.

"Give up the vampire, and I might just let you live. It'll be troublesome for the Irish Catholic Church if I kill a member of the Science Side."

"Hehehe."

O'Reilly's eyes widened when he heard the laugh escape from Kenji's mouth.

"Why are you laughing!?"

"Heh, that's not the right question, is it?" Kenji replied, "Don't you know that, if your opponent laughs when they look like they're losing, it means that they've already won? The question shouldn't be 'Why are you laughing?'. It should be 'How are you about to turn the tides of battle?'!"

"What the hell have you got planned, laddie!?" O'Reilly yelled out.

"There we go!" Kenji replied, "In truth, I don't really have much of a plan. But it looks like you just destroyed a building and attacked an innocent bystander."

O'Reilly growled, "It was you who destroyed the building, and I wouldn't call anyone defending a vampire 'innocent'!"

Kenji smirking, "Try telling that to them."

The sound of whirring and robotic motors came from behind O'Reilly, and he turned around to see a rather large number of drum-shaped security robots surrounding him.

In truth, Kenji had snatched Kamishirasawa-sensei's keycard on his way out of her apartment in order to set up a trap using the security bots. While they could be controlled manually or have a target set, they still retained their default programming. When faced with the unauthorized demolition of an abandoned complex and the battery of a bystander, the bots would naturally make one decision.

"Engaging suspect!"

Each of the security bots hummed the same words one at a time, letting the true weight of the situation sink in.

Of course, O'Reilly was unfazed.

"Hahaha! You think these metal buckets will be enough to stop me!? I am Finley O'Reilly, magic name Venator163, the hunter of night, and these damned machines will never be enough to stop my ambitions!"

At this, large spikes erupted from the ground and impaled each and every one of the security bots, wiping out Kenji's entire "army" in a single blow.

"Phew, that's impressive," Kenji replied nonchalantly, "I'm seriously glad I didn't actually have to fight you."

"What do you mean? This is just getting starte-"

O'Reilly's words were cut off as he was engulfed in a series of explosions from the unstable power units of the robots he had just impaled. Kenji had used the explosion to from one power core to take out couple dozen or so robots, but this hadn't been just one or two; O'Reilly had set off all of the power cores at once with his attack.

The Irishman came stumbling out of the resulting cloud of smoke and ash, hair charred and an arm blown clean off. He made a few inaudible growling sounds before he collapsed to the floor without dignity.

Kenji had won the battle without throwing a single punch.

Brushing himself off, the red-haired high school student looked down at the fallen Irishman. His injuries were severe, but Kenji doubted the attack had been strong enough to outright kill him. The only way he'd die is if he were left here to bleed out.

To Kenji, it didn't matter anyway. Already he could hear the sirens of Anti-skill vehicles approaching in the distance. He was in their hands now.

"Impressive…"

The comment came from behind him. While he had been fighting, Mizuki had climbed down the fire escape of the building they landed on and was now standing behind him.

"Show-off," she chided playfully.

"Oh come on," Kenji smiled, "Strong guys like him are only there to make weaker guys like me look cool, you know."

Mizuki rolled her eyes and turned, "Anyway, we should head back to our dorm. You look like you've seen better days and I need a bath."

Kenji sighed, "Whose dorm are you calling 'ours'?"

"Ah, come to think of it, you probably need a bath too. You know, maybe we can share!"

Kenji glared at the green-haired vampire in front of him, "Oi, what are you saying, you shameless woman?"

But even as he glared at her, he realized that this had become his new normal. Their lives were becoming entangled, and she was becoming less of a stranger and more of a friend.

Kenji continued watching Mizuki as she began twirling around like a child to celebrate her rescue. The summer sun beat down on them harshly, but even the heat couldn't keep their spirits down. In truth, Kenji was relieved that he had managed to save Mizuki.

_"__Maybe she can be troublesome sometimes, but I guess it's the kind of troublesome that you just sigh at and go along with, isn't it?"_

**Between the Lines 2**

Kamishirasawa frowned as she read the note taped to the heavy doors of the school's Skills Lab.

_I.O.U. 50 Security Robots – Arakuyo Kenji_

_P.S. Your keycard is on the desk in the classroom_

In truth, she had just noticed it was missing.

She snatched up the note in anger and stormed off to her desk. This was going to be a nightmare to explain to her superiors.

No matter. Her first priority was going to her room and retrieving the keycard from her desk.

However, it wasn't there.

A similar note had been placed on the desk, in case she had returned to her classroom first, Kamishirasawa suspected, but no keycard was to be found. She doubted that Kenji would make off with it after telling her he was the one who stole it, meaning that someone must have read the note on the door and taken the keycard after he placed it there.

She frowned. The lab was filled with all kinds of confidential research material. Because she didn't know who had the keycard, she had to assume that anyone who did have it probably wanted it to steal that research.

Tapping her hands against the desk irritably, she sighed.

"This is a problem…" Kamishirasawa replied, "Tomorrow's the last day of supplementary courses for the week, so I'll bring this issue up with Kenji tomorrow. Anyway, first thing's first, I should go request a new keycard."

She left the classroom and made her way to the school's administration, practically stomping her feet against the tiled floors.

Had she not been so irritated, she might have noticed a shifty figure in a lab coat slip quickly through the heavy metal doors of the lab and slink further into the hallway. The figure was unrecognizable, but the name on the card reader flashed clear in bright green letters.

_ S. Kamishirasawa_

* * *

**AN: I haven't updated this story in over a month, and for that I apologize. Transitioning from summer vacation to college life hit me pretty hard and I've been pretty busy between doing schoolwork and adjusting to the different atmosphere. I'm probably going to update very irregularly from now on, and I can't promise that a month between chapters isn't going to happen again. Regardless, I haven't lost inspiration for this story and I still plan on continuing to write whenever I get the chance. Please bear with me, and I hope you continue to enjoy this story.**

**Reviews are always appreciated. They tell me what I can do better when writing and let me know if you're enjoying each of the chapters as they come out.**


End file.
